How the new Hitman 3 map became a tropical pirate playground
Ambrose Island, the new Hitman 3 map, is out now and takes Agent 47 to a location rather different from what he’s used to. Gone are the mansions of Sapienza and the clean, efficient laboratories of Chongqing. In their place is a rugged, lawless environment where smugglers and pirates clash and 47 learns a bit more about his erstwhile companion, Lucas Grey.
PCGamesN spoke with Kevin Goyon, IO Interactive’s live game director for Hitman 3, about how the team brought Ambrose Island to life and what opportunities creating such a remote setting opened up for design and storytelling.
Goyon says the process of deciding where to locate a new Hitman map is typically a lengthy, multistep one, where the team considers ideas they haven’t pursued before, however radical, and what might be the most exciting for players. The first new map in Hitman 3 came together rather more smoothly than expected, though.
“In the case of Ambrose Island, we rapidly settled on a pirate fantasy and the possibility to feature fans’ favourite Lucas Grey in the story, leading us to the Andaman Sea,” he says. “One direction we wanted to explore was to make a location that felt dangerous – but where 47 would belong.”
As with any good Hitman map, Ambrose Island and its factions center around the key targets 47 must dispatch. This time, Goyon and his team leaned heavily on Hitman’s story and came up with Akka the pirate queen and Noel, a criminal mastermind mentioned as far back as the Paris level in the trilogy’s first instalment. These two were also born from IOI’s desire to explore Grey’s background and what happened to the pirate syndicate from Mumbai.
“The targets that emerged were related to our desire to explore what happened to the Militia after Lucas
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